Of Broken Hearts And Kingless Queens
by E Salvatore
Summary: They come in the dead of the night and they tell me it was of a broken heart.


**OF BROKEN HEARTS AND KINGLESS QUEENS**

**They come in the dead of the night and they tell me it was of a broken heart. **

* * *

_**i.**_

They come in the dead of night and they tell me it was of a broken heart.

I laugh and call them liars. They cut open your dead chest and rip it out and present it to me as I sit on your throne – my throne now – and even with that strange thing in the hands of these strange creatures, I will myself to not see and wave them off and wrap the word _lies_ around me like armor and laugh even more, laugh until the sun rises, laugh and laugh and laugh because it leaves no room for tears.

They do not try to change my mind and I do not ask to see it again, this thing they call your heart, because to acknowledge you had one all along is to admit that I broke it.

.

.

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_**ii.**_

They nail it shut when I refuse to look and rest your coffin next to those of your family.

I protest and rage and rail against them because you hated your family and you were unworthy and you do not deserve a place alongside them for the rest of eternity. The strange creatures – my creatures now – shake their heads and whisper amongst themselves and look at me with pity in their eyes. One, a familiar face, tells me that even if they were to move you, I will never be laid to rest next to you and I realize then, with a muted sense of horror – everything is muted and blurred and dreamlike still, has been since that night - there is nothing I can do to keep us together.

You offered me forever once upon a dream and I said _no_, and now I will pay for it until the end of time and I wish, oh, how I wish I had taken one last look at you. But there is no one left to grant my wishes.

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.

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_**iii.**_

They name me Queen and trap me in this realm they say is mine to rule.

They chain me down to this cursed throne with jewels and riches and honeyed words, forced oaths and responsibilities and consequences, consequences of a mistake unknowingly made, and I finally, _finally _cry because now I am stuck here for the rest of eternity as you always wanted but you are not by my side, not as you promised you would be and I do not know when, out of those hundred times you came to me with your pretty lies, I fell for them.

But now I am here and you are not, and a thousand broken promises cannot bridge the void between us, a million shattered dreams cannot form a path to wherever it is you have disappeared to.

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.

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_**iv.**_

They lock me in the ballroom one day and I stay there until the moon hangs high above.

I close my eyes and hold out my hands and pretend I am dancing with a ghost, pretend because not even a ghost of you is left for me to haunt, and somewhere in that dream, the only dream this nightmare has not yet tainted, I see for myself the heart that has taken you away from me. The heart they say I broke. And they are not liars, their words are no longer the lies I thought to protect myself with.

I broke your heart and I turned you away and I lied when I said _no _and now you will never know that you broke mine and I wanted to say _yes _and your dreams and mine were one and the same all along.

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_**v.**_

They came in the dead of that horrible night, wrapped in the familiar blanket of magic.

And my heart leapt and my breath hitched and my eyes watered, in that one second before I could make out their strange silhouettes, because all I ever wanted was for you to return and _tell _me my answer, the only answer you would take, the only answer I could honestly give, and I wanted you to hold on when I tried to run from you and me and _us_, that terrifying, beautiful idea of you _and _me, I wanted you to drag me, kicking and screaming and _lying _when I said _no _and _let me go _and _I don't love you_, back home where we belonged together.

But then they said _the King is dead _and I became Queen and this is not home and there is no running away, not from this nightmare.

.

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_**vi.**_

They told me it was a broken heart.

So I rise with the sun, and I rule as Queen in this kingdom lost without its King, and I bide my time, waiting, every moment of every day, for that poor thing in my chest to stop its pitiful attempts at beating.

Soon you will greet me with a smart quip about my impatience as I wait for this broken heart of mine to die.

* * *

**Well. That was something else, wasn't it? If you know me from my previous (and first!) **_**Labyrinth **_**fic - **_**Try A Little Tenderness**_** - I'm sorry to have pulled a 180 on you. Or does this qualify as a 360? It **_**is **_**very, very different from my usual posts, I'll admit.**

**This isn't, however, the first time I've written something like this – I suppose this is what they call a drabble. And I drabble quite frequently, I've just never thought to share the random things I write while waiting for my lunch order to arrive. But this one wouldn't leave me, even after I wrote it down, and so I thought – **_**fine, fine, I'll go let you play with the other Labyfics. **_**So here we are, dreadfully sorry for the angst fest, hope it wasn't too incoherent and made at least a pinch of sense.**

**But if it was… you can always let me know. With a review, yes, that is what I'm fishing for.**

**Alright, I'm out of here. Thanks for reading!**

_**E Salvatore,**_

_**December 2013.**_


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